The charity is going to get the same no matter what. All of the variations of this I've seen works this way: A charity approaches a bar with a box of tickets w

The charity is going to get the same no matter what. All of the variations of this I've seen works this way: A charity approaches a bar with a box of tickets with the total of the ticket face value of X. The total prizes are in the range of X/4 to X/3. The bar buys the whole box for X/2 and keeps all of the proceeds. Or, to put it another way: There are 2000 tickets and each ticket costs $1. The bar buys the whole box for $1000, which goes directly to the charity. The total prizes in the box is $500. The bar sells the tickets out bringing in $2000, pays out $500 in winning tickets, recovers the $1000 paid to the charity and keeps the remaining $500 as profit. Then they call up the charity for another box. Most of the boxes come with displays that list out the various prizes and most places will cross out the big ones when they're paid out... mostly so they employees can keep track and buy out the box when there's a favorable amount of big tickets left.